SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR
8/1/2015 9:40 PM
My Worship Time Focus: To the
Priests: “Call a Fast!”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Joel 1:13-20
Message of the
verses: “13 Gird yourselves with
sackcloth And lament, O
priests; Wail, O ministers
of the altar! Come, spend the night in sackcloth O ministers of my God,
For the grain offering and the drink offering Are withheld from the house of
your God. 14 Consecrate a
fast, Proclaim a solemn assembly; Gather the elders And all the inhabitants
of the land To the house of the LORD your God, And
cry out to the LORD. 15 Alas for the day! For the day of the LORD is near, And it
will come as destruction
from the Almighty. 16 Has not food been cut off before our eyes,
Gladness and joy from the house of our God? 17 The seeds shrivel under their
clods; The storehouses are desolate, The barns are torn down, For the grain is
dried up. 18 How the
beasts groan! The herds of cattle wander aimlessly Because there is no
pasture for them; Even the flocks of sheep suffer. 19 To You, O LORD, I cry; For fire has
devoured the pastures of the wilderness And the flame has burned up all the
trees of the field. 20 Even the beasts of the field pant for You; For the water
brooks are dried up And fire has devoured the pastures of the wilderness.”
We can see from verse 13 that the temple of God is being
affected too through this drought and problem with the locusts, for there was
no grain to offer grain offerings, and the animals were not eating and would
eventually off and therefore there would be no animal sacrifices to offer. In verse fourteen we see Joel uses the term
“your God,” and this term is used eight times in Joel’s writing to show the
people of their personal relationship with God.
Now we will begin to talk about the subject of this
section, that being a fast. Dr. Wiersbe
writes that there was only one time when the Jews were suppose to fast
according to the Law and that was on the Day of Atonement, however the religious
leaders could call for a fast whenever the people were facing an emergency and
if they needed to humble themselves before the Lord to seek His face. “Then all the sons of Israel and all the
people went up and came to Bethel and wept; thus they remained there before the
LORD and fasted that day until evening. And they offered burnt offerings and
peace offerings before the LORD (Judges 20:26).” “Jehoshaphat was afraid and turned his
attention to seek the LORD, and proclaimed a fast throughout all Judah (2
Chronicles 20:3).” “Then I proclaimed a
fast there at the river of Ahava, that we might humble ourselves before our God
to seek from Him a safe journey for us, our little ones, and all our
possessions (Ezra 8:21).” “1 Now on the
twenty-fourth day of this month the sons of Israel assembled with fasting, in
sackcloth and with dirt upon them. 2 The descendants of Israel separated
themselves from all foreigners, and stood and confessed their sins and the
iniquities of their fathers. 3 While they stood in their place, they read from
the book of the law of the LORD their God for a fourth of the day; and for
another fourth they confessed and worshiped the LORD their God (Neh.
9:1-3).” “Now in the fifth year of
Jehoiakim the son of Josiah, king of Judah, in the ninth month, all the people
in Jerusalem and all the people who came from the cities of Judah to Jerusalem
proclaimed a fast before the LORD (Jer. 36:9).”
Now as we read verse 13 from Joel chapter one we see that there was such
an emergency going on in order to call a fast.
He tells them to put on sackcloth and we have written about that in
earlier SD’s as it is a rough type of cloth that people put on when they wanted
to humbled themselves before the Lord and fasting often went along with the
wearing of sackcloth. “Da. 9:3 So I gave
my attention to the Lord God to seek Him by prayer and supplications, with fasting, sackcloth and ashes.”
Dr. Wiersbe writes “In Joel 1:15-18, we have the lament
of the nation, and in verses 19-20, the prayer of the prophet as he interceded
for the nation. The lament is a vivid
description of the sad condition of the land, the crops, the flocks, and the
herds; for ‘the Day of the Lord’ had come to the nation. The immediate reference is to the assault of
the locusts and the devastating effects of the drought, but later, Joel uses
the phrase to describe the terrible ‘Day of the Lord’ when the nations will be
judged. God is the Lord of creation, and
without His blessing, nature cannot produce what we need for sustaining life
(Pss. 65; 104:10-18, 21; 145:15). We should
never pray lightly, ‘Give us this day our daily bread,’ for only God can
sustain life (Acts 17:25, 28).” I think
that perhaps we in this country do take for granted the food that we have to
eat, and at times forget to ask the Lord’s blessing on it, and His provision of
it.
In 1:18 we see from the NASB “how the beasts grown” and this reminds us of what Paul wrote to the
Romans about the earth growing. “18 For
I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be
compared with the glory that is to be revealed to us. 19 For the anxious
longing of the creation waits eagerly for the revealing of the sons of God.
20 For the creation was subjected to
futility, not willingly, but because of Him who subjected it, in hope 21 that the creation itself also will be set
free from its slavery to corruption into the freedom of the glory of the
children of God. 22 For we
know that the whole creation groans and suffers the pains of childbirth
together until now.”
In verse nineteen we see Joel crying out to the Lord, and
this means he was praying to the Lord about what they were going through. This means that he fasted, prayed, and put on
sackcloth in order to humble himself and wanted the people to humble themselves
before the Lord due to the situation that they found themselves in.
Dr. Wiersbe writes:
“To often we drift along from day to day, taking our blessings for
granted, until God permits a natural calamity to occur and remind us of our
total dependence on Him. When water is
rationed and food is scarce, and when prices for necessities escalate, then we
discover they poverty of our artificial civilization and our throwaway
society. Suddenly, necessities become
luxuries, and luxuries become burdens.”
The people of Judah figured this out when God sent a
small (in size) army of locusts to cause the trouble that they were facing at
this time in their history. God is the
Lord of hosts, and the Lord of the armies of heaven and the earth. God is almighty as we see in verse fifteen,
and God does whatsoever He wants, and all He does brings glory to Himself.
8/1/2015 10:19 PM
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